Company to bring chip technology back to Vermont

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(Host) A company based in France and Wisconsin is opening a manufacturing plant on IBM’s campus in Essex Junction that will employ 90 people within three years.

The company makes specialized security technology that’s used in passports and enhanced drivers’ licenses.

As VPR’s Ross Sneyd reports, the company uses technology that was developed 40 years ago by a Vermont man who used to be in charge of the IBM plant.

(Sound of pages flipping)

(Sneyd) Paul Castrucci flips through a booklet he wrote that sums up the history of technological advances that were developed by I-B-M.

(Castrucci) "It all started with this little simple circuit called the SB95.”

(Sneyd) Castrucci was a star at IBM for many years. When he retired in 1989, he was the top executive at the Essex Junction plant.

Before that, he helped to develop some of the big advances in computer memory chip technology.

In 1970, one of the things he invented was a little chip that he suggested could be implanted on a credit card. It could hold all kinds of data, he figured.

(Castrucci) "You could go to the bank and say put $1,000 into this card and go out there and spend it. Every time you make a purchase at a store, it would deduct it automatically.”

(Sneyd) Castrucci called it a dynamic card because, using computers, he could change the data that was stored on the chip. He’s still got a prototype of it.

(Castrucci) "This is my dynamic credit card. See, a bunch of wires on the back of it. So you just had to put that into a terminal.”

(Snyed) IBM wasn’t interested in the little plastic “smart card.” It was focused on big computers in the ‘70s. So the invention was filed away and credit cards got magnetic strips, instead.

Over the years, others advanced the technology. New radio frequency IDs – such as high-tech passports or enhanced drivers’ licenses – were developed from the ideas that Castrucci pioneered.

So Castrucci is excited that a new generation of his technology will be manufactured on IBM’s Essex Junction campus by a French company.

Like his dynamic credit card, the "contactless” technology made by ASK int-Tag stores information that can be read by a computer.

In this case, computer chips are outfitted with an antenna that can transmit the data to the computer by just waving it past a reader.

Thierry Burgess is the general manager of the new company, which will operate in space it will lease from IBM.

(Burgess) "Actually it is an evolution of the smart card technology. The difference being it’s a step function in terms of the technology that was developed.”

(Sneyd) Paul Castrucci says it’s not so much a step as a leap from the technology he got a patent for 49 years ago.

But he’s thrilled that these super-smart cards will be made at his old factory – and might help chart a new future for the plant.

For VPR News, I’m Ross Sneyd.

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